Jason Adamo @ Black Flower – Jan 8, 2009, originally uploaded by viridari.

I did my first live music shoot last week. The music was great, the beer was fantastic, and it was a lot of fun capturing these images of Jason Adamo’s band rocking the Black Flower last Thursday night.

My digital camera wouldn’t have pulled this off. The light in the Black Flower is quite dim, and the performers are lit with red-gelled lights that necessitated the use of a very fast film. In this case, I used Ilford Delta 3200 Professional shot at EI 3200. The camera was nothing special, just a Canon EOS Rebel G that I picked up very cheaply on eBay, coupled with a fast 50mm f/1.8 prime lens.

Not being a big fan of motion blur, I tried to keep the shutter speed at 1/90 or faster which necessitated wide apertures most of the night.

Jason and his band were very photographer-friendly and were very enthusiastic about having a photographer come out to shoot them. Doubly so when they found out that I was working in black & white film!

The Black Flower crew was also great, and I’m sure I’ll be going back there again and again (if for no other reason because they have a fantastic selection of craft brewed beers!)

“Does that really work?”, originally uploaded by viridari.

I’m wondering if any other photographers get this question very often.

The photograph accompanying this blog entry was taken after these two young men stopped in the street, curious about the very unusual (to them) camera that I had slung around my neck. It was a Mamiya C330 Professional TLR, which looks nothing like what most people would consider a camera today, but isn’t particularly unusual among film photographers.

They looked at it, laughed, and asked if that was a camera or something. I chatted with them a bit, always happy to try to give street photographers a better public image, and they asked if it really worked.

So I took their photograph.

Would these guys have stopped and allowed me to photograph them had I been carrying a more conventional looking camera? I very much doubt it. Nobody seems to be very interested if I’m carrying an SLR. In fact, many seem to get defensive. But with the TLR, many people get downright friendly and eager to have their photographs taken.